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Architects: José Esparza, Mariel Lozano
- Area: 60 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Iñaki Viladomat
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Manufacturers: Teka, URREA
Text description provided by the architects. The project CUPA-422 (a) is located on the top floor of building "A" of the Centro Urbano Presidente Alemán (CUPA). With only 60 m2, this apartment unit is one of the 1,080 homes that conform to the iconic group of modern buildings known as the first multifamily in Mexico, a vertical housing project with multiple amenities and significant extensions of green areas completed in 1949. Designed by architect Mario Pani, CUPA incorporates a mixed-use model with shops on the ground floor and housing on the upper floors. In addition to the compactness and stacking of dwellings, the multifamily is innovative due to its duplex typologies, similar to those in the Unite d'Habitation (1952) designed by the architect Le Corbusier. This typology is characterized by developing housing on two levels, promoting the standardization of spaces and the introduction of household appliances, which reflected the social, constructive, and technological changes of its time.
The main idea of this renovation project was to preserve the modern essence of the apartment, seeking to recover its original finishes and integrating similar materials in its design. In this sense, we recovered the wood of the access door, the stairs, and the ironwork of all the windows from the original design.
The apartment is located on two levels, on the access level there is the kitchen and dining room, and on the upper level the living room, the master bedroom, and the bathroom. We began the project by removing the plaster on the beams and slab to show the texture of the formwork in the concrete, and together with the lighting project, we leave both finishes visible. On the ground floor, a white terrazzo was placed with aggregates in light shades of terracotta, and the kitchen was completely redesigned using wood and stainless steel for the countertop.
We decided to keep the open space that the previous owners obtained for the upper floor by removing the divisions for rooms of the original project. Maintaining this multipurpose space, our renovations focused on the bathroom, and closet and replacing the floor with a wooden floor like the original that we discovered by removing the paint from the stairs. The bathroom floor was replaced, and half of the walls were covered with the same terrazzo used on the ground floor. Additionally, a custom sink was made from the same material with a terracotta-tone metal frame, and we use the same tone for the shower frames.
The south wall was conceived as a homogeneous piece that through a significant wooden element covers the entire wall, opens a niche with shelves, projects two large closets, and incorporates the bedroom closet. Together, the material palette, the neutral tones, and the clear finishes match the simplicity of the original project while offering spatial freedom to the user to configure the space to their personal taste.
